When I get around in the country to educational meetings, we often -fortunately - begin with a song. These days Erik Lindeberg´s " The Tree of Life" is very much used, and I am pleased with that.

The song has a refrain:

Let them play in the top of the tree of life
Let them feel that life is great
Let them behold the blue horizons
And the gate of the firmament.

After the last verse the refrain goes: let "us" play, feel, and behold instead of "them". That is an important change. We must not just do something for "them", but also something for ourselves. That is the way it is going to hang together in the future.

We are all in education and development, and there is a need for us all daring to dream, have ideas, make suggestions. At any rate if we listen to the futurologists´ thoughts, as they appear in Rolf Jensen´s book: "The Dream Society".

In the book he points out that the agricultural society lasted for 1000 years, that the industrial society lasted for 200 years, and that the information society only got 20 years to work. Now a new culture is standing in front of us, a culture, where the dreams will be central. We will need pictures, myths, and legends. The story tellers will be appreciated again. The reality- orientated, the logical, and the scientific are often tools, which point to the rear. Now we need ideas and dreams, just like the time, when some people dreamed of flying like the birds , or Kennedy´s idea about the man on the moon. It does not begin with economy and market, but with the dream and the idea, which at he same time often express a very high ambition level. After that, these dreams must become a reality through hard work. But notice that behind these thoughts lies an idea of the future being a great room of possibilities.

If I should translate to the future room of Youth Town, my dream would be that we as an overall educational idea saw a Youth Town, where young people continuously were taught, and where al facilities were used as room and conditions for an optimal learning. I would see a co-operation between the Folkeskole and the youth education, a co-operation between the school at SPF and Youth Town in the form of a school course here at the centre, beginning with 8^th form and ending with 12^th form. Folkeskole and youth education in continuation and connection. 8^th and 9^th school year at the school, a 10^th school year in co- operation, and after that 11^th and 12^th school year in Youth Town.

It is permitted to dream, and it is permitted to act.

Svend E. Pedersen